Background and objectives: Family medicine residents increasingly work collaboratively with psychology trainees. One type of collaborative experience involves dual interviewing of clinic patients. The goal of this observational study was to provide an initial description of what occurs during dual interviews as it relates to behavioral health assessments and interventions.
Methods: Psychology trainees provided detailed descriptions of 550 collaborative patient encounters involving 348 patients from the Wayne State University/Crittenton Family Medicine Residency clinic. Psychology trainees coded the frequency of behavioral health assessments and interventions by the resident, psychology trainee, or both.
Results: Eighty percent of the encounters contained a behavioral health assessment, and 29% contained a behavioral health intervention. Most of these clinical activities were collaboratively done. Interestingly, residents and psychology trainees tended to provide different behavioral health interventions. Moreover, residents provided different behavioral health interventions in repeat dual interviews (n=202) as opposed to first-time visits (n=348), while psychology trainees did not.
Conclusions: Little is known about the process of dual interviewing, and this study is an important first step in describing how residents and psychology trainees actually interact during these encounters. More research is needed about the impact of dual interviewing on residents' behavior.